Quick Takes: News You May Have Missed

Iran has been pressing Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Baath party to open a front of continued confrontations targeting the Israeli border, according to informed Israeli security sources.

Assad is looking for ways to deflect attention from the continued waves of uprisings targeting his regime, said the security officials.

The security officials said Iran is particularly concerned Assad’s rule may be threatened by the internal uprisings, which it has blamed on Muslim Brotherhood allies. Iran has been pressuring the Syrian leader to continue confrontations with the Jewish state, which could involve the Iranian-backed Hizbullah in Lebanon.

The last time Hizbullah provoked border clashes with Israel, when the group stormed the Jewish state’s borders in 2006, the result was a 33-day confrontation known as the Second Lebanon War.

The security officials said that while Iran has been pushing Syria toward a confrontation with Israel, Turkey has been pushing Assad toward reforms as a way for the Baath party to remain in power.

The information comes as Assad’s regime has been implicated in aiding a series of deadly border clashes that rocked Israel’s borders two weeks ago as well as last month.

Israel Arrests Palestinian MP

A politician from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah organization was arrested by Israeli forces on suspicion of planning a wave of terrorist attacks, according to informed Israeli security sources.

Officially, the Israel Defense Forces will not comment on the arrest last week of Fatah lawmaker Hussam Khader, a member of the Palestinian parliament. The Israeli news media has not reported on the event.

A lawyer for Khader, who has been convicted of planning terrorist attacks in the past, claimed to this column that the arrest was political.

The IDF carried out a large-scale arrest operation in which they surrounded Khader’s house in the northern West Bank stronghold of Balata, located in city of Nablus, or biblical Shechem.

The Israeli government has traditionally been reluctant to implicate members of Fatah in terrorism. The U.S. and Israel maintain Fatah is a partner for peace.

Khader has a history of involvement in terrorism. He was arrested by Israel in 2003 and convicted in 2005 for being a member of a Fatah terror cell coordinating with Hizbullah.

He was convicted of helping to fund terror attacks, including at least one failed suicide bombing. Khader’s group sent two suicide bombers to a West Bank Jewish community in January 2003, but the attack was foiled by security forces, according to the indictment. Israel released Khader in 2009.

Radicals Attend, Speak At Gathering

The founders of a radical group that teaches the tactics of rioting, confrontation and intimidation were among the main speakers at a union convention at which one leader called for opposing “right-wing threats to dismantle the Middle Class.”

Heather Booth, director of a Saul Alinsky-style community organizing group, the Midwest Academy, was among the main speakers at the “2011 State Battles Summit,” held this past week at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Booth’s husband, Paul, also was a speaker at the union summit. Paul Booth is a co-founder of Midwest Academy as well as the founder and the former national secretary of Students for a Democratic Society, the radical 1960s anti-war movement from which William Ayers’s domestic Weather Underground terrorist organization splintered.

The two also helped instigate the riots protesting the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.

The four-day union summit, meanwhile, was organized by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, with participation from the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest union.

Booth has stated that building a ‘progressive majority’ would help for ‘a fair distribution of wealth and power and opportunity.”

Midwest later morphed into a national organizing institute for an emerging network of organizations known as Citizen Action, which helped to plan the protests in February against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s proposed state budget cuts.

This column first reportedthat Midwest’s executive director, Jackie Kendell, was part of the team that developed volunteers for President Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Camp Obama was a two-to-four day intensive course run in conjunction with Obama’s campaign aimed at training volunteers to become activists to help Obama win the presidential election.

The panel discussion following the opening performance in Chicago of the play “The Love Song of Saul Alinsky,” a work described by the Chicago Sun-Times as “bringing to life one of America’s greatest community organizers.”

Ed Koch: Weiner Will Never Be Mayor

Disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., can never be mayor of New York, the city’s former mayor, Ed Koch, declared in a radio interview.

Weiner, stung by a social media sexting scandal, has never been shy about his ambitions to one day become New York City’s mayor. He was considered a shoe-in as a candidate for the 2013 elections.

However, Koch says the controversy surrounding Weiner’s explicit social media messaging puts the kibosh on the politician’s mayoral aspirations.

“I don’t think he can ever be mayor of the city of New York,” stated Koch. “I think he could ultimately run again for political office after he has engaged in some contrition, in some penitence, after he has demonstrated to the public at large that he has learned an enormous lesson. But I don’t think it will ever permit him to run for mayor.”

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for Internet giant WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York’s 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 2-4 p.m.

Aaron Klein is the Jerusalem bureau chief for Breitbart News. Visit the website daily at www.breitbart.com/jerusalem. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York's 970 AM Radio on Sundays from 7 to 9 p.m. Eastern. His website is KleinOnline.com.